The History of
Thorens Through My "Collection"Documenting the history
of the company in artifacts.

Summary:

1883 Hermann
Thorens starts a firm to make music box movements in
Ste. Croix Switzerland. Produces entire boxes
and supplies movements to third parties such as Anri,
Fred Zimbalist and Sliverite.1902 (or 1889?)
begin making cylinder phonographs. No mention of
cylinder phonographs as of 1914.1906 begin
making spring-driven disc gramophones. Become a
major supplier of spring-driven motors. 1913-1964 make
more than 5 million pocket lighters.1914-1921 and
1938-1952 make harmonicas.1928 begin
making electric gramophones.1936 (?) - (?) make skiing
equipment1954-1960 make
Riviera mechanical dry shavers.
1956 become successful high-end turn table producers,
starting with the TD-124.1963
merge with Paillard.(It has been suggested that Paillard sold the music box
department to Jean-Paul Thorens with two requirements:
to live in Sainte-Croix and not employ workers from
the old Thorens factory... He
moved to L'Auberson just near
Ste-Croix. He worked in this field under the
trade name 'Melodies SA - Thorens' from
1963 till 1985. [as per Jean-Marc
LeBout])1966 de-merge
with Paillard, move to Germany, merge with Wilhem
Franz's company, EMT, forming Thorens-Franz AG.1985/86 Reuge
SA takes over production of Thorens AD-30 music boxes
(from Jean-Paul Thorens?).2000 denied
bankruptcy protection in Germany.2002 becomes
Thorens Services Ltd in Switzerland.2011Guillaume
Thorens establishes Hermann Thorens SA with Marc
Thorens and Yann Thorenswith the advertised purpose: "The
company aims to manufacture and trade of
mechanical and metal objects such as razors,
lighters, watches, cutlery manufactured in
Switzerland, as well as components and
accessories, such qu'écrins, cases, boxes,
precious metals, etc. ."A subset
of the material on this page was organized into a
straight-forward story and published in "Antique
Phonograph News" in January, 2014 and is available at
http://www.capsnews.org/apn2014-1.htm.

A friend defines a collection as more than one of
anything (that's why he gave me an old record cleaner
once--he already had one and didn't need another
collection). My turntable of choice
during my bachelor years was a Thorens TD160.
Little did I know the history of the company.
When I got into the older players I early on
discovered an old wind-up portable Thorens (now I had
more than one!). Since then I have kept an eye
out to try and 'document'--in artifacts--some Thorens
history.

It Starts with
music boxes-1883

In 1883
Hermann Thorens began making music box
mechanisms in Sainte Croix Switzerland.

Hermann Thorens 1856-1943

From
the Museum of Music Boxes and Automatons,
Sainte-Croix:

The
clockmaker Antoine Favre-Salomon, a native of
Geneva, invented a musical pock watch in
1796. [He became known as] the "Inventor of
the music box". Sainte-Croix became the
world capital of mechanical music.

--------------------------------
From "Music boxes:
the collector's guide to selecting, restoring, and
enjoying new and vintage music boxes"--Gilbert
Bahl, 1993, Courage Books [with corrections]

"Hermann
Thorens Sainte-Croix, Switzerland,
1881-1985. Produced musical movements and music
boxes until 1985, when it [the music box concern---not
the rest] was bought by Reuge SA. Known
for its modern cylinder movements, which are found in
many popular collectors' items, such as wooden boxes
with revolving tops. The revolving portion often
had wooden, hand-carved figures - e.g., Anri - and the
base usually had a 28-note movement. The company's
movements are also found mounted in a wide range of
cases, ranging from simple, well-finished plain boxes to
boxes with ornately decorated wooden inlay
designs. The disc music boxes were sold under the
names Edelwiess and Helvetia. The company was
bought by Paillard after WWII [no, 1963 to 1966], and
Jean Paul Thorens opened a factory in L' Auberson to
produce movements under the trade name Melodies.
Trade mark: anchor cast into bedplate of Edelwiess disc
machine."

Reuge started in 1886.
----------------------------------

From "Music Boxes: a guide for collectors"--David
Tallis, 1971, Stein and Day

Hermann Thorens "Made small
music boxes from 1846 [really? wasn't it 1883?] to
1943 at Ste. Croix"Ernst Paillard
"Manager of the (Paillard) Ste. Croix works, with his
brother-in-law Eugéne Thorens, forefather of the firm
which exists today."

According
to Moving
Images: From Edison
to the Webcam,
1895 was an extremely bad one for Paillard, Ernest
Paillard, his son, Albert, and
his son-in-law Eugéne
Thorens took over the business. In 1898 they
began the manufacture of the
"Echophon", a small
cylinder phonograph,
and in 1904, the Paillard-Gramophone.( Moving
Images: From
Edison to the
Webcam, John Fullerton,
Astrid Soderbergh
Widding (editors),
Indiana University
Press June 1,
2000.)
----------------------------------

Click on this picture to view a
PDF of a Paillard patent from 1882 which was witnessed
by both Eugéne Thorens and Hermann Thorens:

But the firm we are interested
in is Hermann's which was started in 1883.

Click on the picture below to
see a patent from 1897 on a mechanical music toy by
Hermann Thorens:

Click on the picture below to
see a 1901 patent by Hermann for a "mechanical musical
instrument" looking like a round disc music box:

Thorens made both cylinder and
disc music box mechanisms.

Below is a nice old
box into which someone has inserted a more modern
Thorens mechanism. I picked it up around 2004.

It plays five different songs--the pins strike the
notes on the comb.

Late in 2009 I picked up the curiousity below.
It is a Thorens mechanism in a housing to play "How
Dry I Am" while pouring a (presumably alcoholic)
beverage.

The person who sold it claims, "After my grandfather
came back from WWII his first Christmas present
was this unique Silverite liquor bottle stopper
and pourer. It plays music when the liquid is
poured. It comes in its original gift box
with brass tag from the jewelry store and still is
in very good working condition. The box is 4
x 5 x 2" and has all its complete corners and is
marked Silverite Company, Brooklyn 16, New York
and Thorens for its quality music box. The
music box works are marked Switzerland Thorens,
see photos. When tilted 90 decrees, a brass
ball swings inside releasing the mechanism which
plays How Dry I Am that sounds like a
symphony arrangement in a loud pleasing
presentation."

[Well that was another sub-collection
started.]

In 2013 I acquired a musical Christmas Bell
with a Thorens movement playing "White
Christmas". I have since seen a blue one
as well. The box shows it is an actual
Thorens product and they were at Atlantic and
Thorens Ave. in New York.

In 2014 I bought a Schuco Radio 4012 tin toy
car. Schuco Radio 4012 and Radio 5000
cars had Thorens music boxes to act as the car's
"radio". Mine isn't in the best condition
(so far) because I have it as a Thorens artifact
and not a tin toy memorabilia. I had
to make sure it played that specific car-related
tune as I have seen others playing more generic
music. The 4012 was made 1952-64. Link
to more info is below.

Flip the "radio button" and on comes the Thorens
music box music.

Advert from the Milwaukee Journal of
April 28, 1947 (pg. 18):

Click below to see an odd advert
from the April, 1978 edition of Popular Science
for a do-it-yourself music box using Thorens disc
music box works.

But I guess not all their ideas
on music boxes were the best as this incident put them
on page 1 of the Milwaukee
Journal on January 19, 1944:

PLEASE DO NOT
CONTACT ME WITH MUSIC BOX QUESTIONS!
I am no expert on music boxes.

[The general (but not rigid) pattern
seems to be: first number is the number of songs and
the second number is an indication of teeth
(notes)--although the label I saw of a 308 seems to
break the pattern.]

Next
came acoustic phonographs and gramophones-1903 to
the 1940s (overlapping with electrics)

It was generally accepted that in
1903 Thorens began making cylinder phonographs (at the
bottom of the page is cited a publication by Thorens
that says the first cylinder machines were made in
1889 but they were first put in their catalog in 1902)
and changed in 1906 to outside horn disc
gramophones. Other companies did the same with
less expertise in spring-driven mechanisms (furniture
companies, piano companies, aircraft companies (!) and
organ manufacturers). I am particularly
interested in getting any of these older Thorens
machines as they are few and far between in North
America. I have included links to pages with
some great pictures of these older machines.

Courtesy of the City of London
Phonograph and Gramophone Society, I have copies of
portions of three Thorens catalogs--1907, 1910
(although the machines seem more primitive than the
1907s) and 1914--they
were bundled into one volume in 1967.

I picked up a Thorens parts catalog from
1936 showing tone-arms, sound boxes and miscellaneous
bits. Click on the cover below:

I have made a translation of the
Thorens portion of a Swiss page and greatly expanded
it showing cylinder phonographs and disc gramophones
from other sources here:
Thorens phonographs and gramophones. This is my
main overall Thorens acoustic page.

In the article The failed 1912 merger
between Carl Lindström AG, the Gramophone Company
Ltd and the Victor Talking Machine Co Inc.,Peter
Martland makes the following quote:

"In 1911, the Swiss manufacturer Thorens
exported clockwork motors for use in British-made disk
players to the value of £75,000 [M1,875,000 or
$375,000]. In comparison, the machine turnover of the
British branch of the Gramophone Company was £108,242
[M2,706,050 or $541,210]. However as the prices of
Lindström machines were anything up to eighty per cent
cheaper than those of the Gramophone Company, the
extent of German and Swiss domination of the British
and Russian record player trade must have been
phenomenal."

Click on this picture to see a PDF of a 1915 patent by
Hermann Thorens on a 'frame for the driving mechanism for
talking machines':

Click
on
this
picture
to
see
a
PDF
of
a
1917
patent
by
Hermann
Thorens
on
an
'automatic brake for talking machines':

========================
What I have been able to get so far are: one cylinder
phonograph, one spring-driven table-top
gramophone, one portable and two 'cameraphones'.

My cylinder player is my latest acquisition.

The machines lid has the top works attached and it is
closed by turning it upside down (I understand this is
common for French machines).

Reverse the lid and there is the mechanism. It
also came with the original box for the reproducer.

And the opriginal horn and this is ready to be wound by
a right-handed person and played.

However, the peculiarity of this machine and one other
Thorens phonograph is that putting the handle on the
other end accommodates left-handed winding.

All known existing versions of this machine are labelled
for a London firm of Brown Brothers and was originally
sold throughout the UK. Some catalog material from
B.B. & Co. showing Thorens products will be uploaded
shortly.

The reproducer.

This machine is very much like the "Capital" model in
the 1907 catalog here.
A generally-accepted identifying feature of Thorens
phonographs is the harp-shaped end piece.

Here are my table-top, "Crystallin cameraphone" and
Excelda together for scale.

This 2007
acquisition is a table top disc gramophone.

Lid and 'volume
doors' open.

The decoration on
the lid and one door.

Inside the case.
The picture is 'upside down' to show the number in the
lower corner ('16'). The naked wood on the left is
a modification someone has since made to help guide the
crank handle. BTW these Thorens 'pillar-and-plate'
motors were available into the 1960s (Recently opened
'old stock' boxes had the motors wrapped in newspaper
from April, 1960! Here is a motor
purchased around 2005.Here you can see
the date on the French language newspaper used for
wrapping. Courtesy Paul Flint.) and are now
being put into machines built to mimic those of the
1900s (in other words, fake antiques,
'crapophones'). Pictures of a fake on ebay
are here. A good
website on fakes is here.

The motor doesn't have quite the same logo as used
elsewhere. Note the anchor.

On the bottom of the inside of the case the number is
found again. Is this how they matched up the parts
for individual machines? Note how the stain was
not applied where we wouldn't see.

The reproducer has the same anchors so we can assume it
was also branded for Thorens--it is marked 'made in
Switzerland' (I make this point as some machines of this
vintage will have parts from various manufacturers
'thrown' together.)

The person who
sold this machine to me knew I was interested in the
company's history, so he also gave me a letter that was
sent to the person who owned it before. This
individual wrote to Thorens about the machine in 1965
(when they seemed to still be interested in their
history).

And Thorens
claims that it was made by them in 1925.

If this is true,
Thorens was able to copy Victor's Orthophonic reproducer
work extremely quickly as "Victor Day" (when the
Orthophonic technology was released to the public) was
November 2, 1925. Perhaps this was after
1925. The style is very consistent with many of
the machines from Thoren's 1914 catalog (here).

In 2014 I
picked up this 'ultra portable' I call the 'Cristallin'
for the name on the reproducer (some sourced call this
style a "cameraphone").

With 10" record for scale (yes, I didn't put a needle in
the reproducer for the picture):

A video of the above machine is here.
This is machine is very similar to the Thorens
"cameraphones" listed at grachonogram.com such as---
L'Argentin" (also named after the reproducer) from
1914 here: http://www.graphonogram.com/3-id-47-l-argentin.html
Also the later (1929) model "501" here:http://www.graphonogram.com/3-id-409-modele-no-501.html
And perhaps an early version of the Thorens "Graphonette"
shown here: http://www.grammophon.ch/taschen_grammophone/thorens/thorens.htmThis is my
Thorens 'Excelda' 'cameraphone' (picked up around
2004). These were available in black
(wooden horn, with mica diaphragms--example from
Adrian Smith is here)
one source below suggests 1928 and in various colours
(and with metal horns and diaphragms) from 1942 to
1947 (one source mentions 1935) (which gives a date to
my green one below--here
is picture of all colours except the grey of
mine below). With it is a Kodak camera of the
style it was made to mimic (A Toronto-made No. 1A
Pocket Folding camera series II, 1929-31, originally
$24.50). More than one gramophone maker made
machines that were portable and looked like
cameras. Don't ask me why.

The Kodak (which you can also see on the main Family
page) opened up.

The Excelda opened up.

The size of the box forces you to put it on the edge
of the table to wind. Once wound, you can put it
anywhere to play. To wind again, take off the
record and put it back on the edge. The
'turntable' is so small that you must screw the record
in place to prevent wobble--and the instructions
suggested you use a second record under it to help
support the one being played and to help regulate the
speed.

There's that trademark again.

Excelda adverts ("the word's smallest portable
phonograph"!):

Victoria Advocate,
June 25, 1946 (pg. 1) on the left and St. Joseph Gazette,
July 25, 1946 (pg. 5) on the right.

This
is a more conventional portable probably made to compete
with the great HMV portables of the 30s and 40s (and in
the case of the HMV102, the 50s and 60s!). I picked
this up at an outdoor antique show in the early
1980s--before the kids came along and put this sort of
thing into hiatus--so this is what made the 'collection'
official.

-Mac McGilbray has a Columbia 122 portable
with Thorens motor and turn table. This clearly
isn't a retro-fit and suggests another market for
Thorens in supplying other marks with hardware (this is
not a 'fake' as mentioned above as both the case and
hardware are of the same vintage and there is no
evidence of this motor replacing any other). Pictures
here.

-US record label firm out of New York, Plaza
Music Company, marketed 'Kompact' cameraphones and
'PAL' portables that used Thorens parts shown here(thanks to Don Woodrow and Shelby
Sim).
-Shelby Sim of Sarnia (via Doug) sends these pictures
of a 'Pal Jr.' portable (I thought 'Pal' was a Canadian
portable from Compo) with a Thorens motor here.-Perophone
apparently used Thorens motors.

And if you
use any of the machines above, you will need to use a new
needle for each side of each record. So...

The "200 Forte" tin
I picked up from Quebec around 1999 and the others sent
from Minnesota, France, England, Australia and Finland in
2009 to 2012. There are more I could collect,
shown here,
but note the collared tin is not shown (link courtesy of
"songster.de the (hopefully) largest Needle Tin Collection
online" [only seems to work with Microsoft Exploder]).

I had not
previously seen a collared needle (shown):

Detail of a brass container I own, which was called a
needle tin but which is actually a container involving
lighters -- see below:

Paper holder of Durasteel ("100 plays each!")
closed:
My friend Horst has two outside-horn Thorens
machines. Click on the machines below to see more
pictures.

I picked up a 1939 French-language Thorens Flier .
Click on the image below:

In 1928 Thorens developed an electric motor for
gramophones and continued on in this business.
This motor has also been called the first electric
'direct drive' turntable. There is some dispute
as the patent cited is by Paillard and all Thorens
patents of this time seem to be acoustic gramophones.

Click the picture below to see a PDF of a patent
assigned to "Hermann Thorens Société Anonyme" in 1944
for "an automatic record changer":

Click
the
picture below to see a PDF of a patent assigned to
"Hermann Thorens S.A." in 1945 for a "wireless
receiver":

The above looks suspiciously like the top of this 'New
Century tuner 1949-1952' on ebay August 2014 (not mine).

I picked up a French-language Thorens
brochure from 1953-56 showing turn-tables,
record players, speakers and more. CB 13,
CB 33, CBA 83, CD 42. Click on the image
below to see 10 pages.

The following is from Art Dudley's Review in April, 2008 Sterophileof
the publication
Swiss Precision: The Story of the Thorens TD 124 and
Other Classic Turntablesby Joachim
Bung, published by Joachim and Angelika Bung

"In 1956, an
engineer named Louis Thévenaz presented his employer
with the prototype of a turntable of singularly high
quality, aimed at broadcast professionals and the
burgeoning domestic audio market alike. The employer
was Thorens S.A. of Sainte-Croix, and one year
later, the first TD 124 (a tourne-disc, or turntable,
with a 12" platter and four speeds) was introduced
for the then-remarkable sum of 400 Swiss Francs.
With its 10W motor, 10-lb lower platter,
clutch-decoupled upper platter, combination drive
system of belt and idler wheel, and sculpted good
looks, the 22-lb Thorens TD 124 took the audio world
by storm: After the Garrard 301 of 1953, the TD 124
was the player to which most European and American
hobbyists aspired, and by the time production ceased
in 1967, Thorens had made more than 90,000 of them."

BTW: 400 Swiss Francs equaled $91.40 in 1956 (at
4.373) and was $730 in 2009 based on CPI.

Here is an
annoucement on the TD 124 from the Milwaukee Journal
of December 1, 1957 (pg. 46):

And
an
article from the St.
Petersburg Times of February 7, 1960 (pg. 37):

At
some point I acquired two brochures from this era--one
showing the transcription turntable/record player/record
changer lineup and the other giving advice on "HiFi and
your budget". Click to view:

As noted above, Thorens made speakers. Images
for DE 8 and BE 8 speakers: here.

In 1963, Thorens
merged with Paillard SA, Ste.-Croix which at the time
was producing Bolex cameras, Pecisa calulators and
Hermes typewriters. Paillard advert from 1964
below showing Thorens turntable with the other products
(Courtesy: http://www.typewriters.ch/collection/HERMES.html):

In 1966 Thorens
de-merged with Paillard, 'moved' to Germany and merged
with Wilhem Franz's company, EMT, forming
Thorens-Franz AG. There are sources that suggest
this was some how a cost-cutting move to compete with
the Japanese. Thorens would make a big deal about
this after 2000 calling it a return to Switzerland.

Ottawa Citizen,
December 20, 1984. "The 'Better Built' German
Turntable".

1972:
In their own word, "Thorens develops the TD 160 and
writes history."

Below is my 'serious' TD160 turntable, first
manufactured in 1972. It has a 7 pound platter
to help regulate its speed. Currently it is
hooked up to the computer to digitize old vinyl
recordings otherwise unavailable in digital
format. As mentioned above, this is what started
the 'collection' (although there was a huge gap
between purchasing this one and the portable).

Trademark hasn't changed in how long?

"In
1975 Thorens builds its 500,000th record player."

1995 Thorens continued making turntables and
even introduced CD players. (Below is a picture of
a TCD 2000 I don't own. They also made the
2300.)

They were at the
Consumer Electronics Show (CES) as late as 1999.
However, they ran into trouble by December 2000 and were
looking for new investors ('Das Ende'--according to one German
source). Being denied bankruptcy protection in
Germany, they restructured and re-launched in 2002 as
Thorens Services Ltd. under new
management. So "one of
the oldest and most experienced manufacturers of sound
reproduction equipment in Europe" still lives. Sort
of. There is a
suggestion that Thorens has become more a label on
designed products as turntables bearing that marque are
being manufactured by Pro-Ject and Dual (!). (I have read that Thorens
TD-170 is actually a re-badged Dual CS-435 and the Thorens
295 MK 4 is a Pro-Ject turntable with
a Thorens name.) www.thorens.com does
work.

As noted above, a PDF 'magazine' was available for free
download from Thorens in 2008. Within it was a bit
of company history in their own words as well as some
images. The text and images from this article can be
found here.In 2011 three people
with the last name Thorens establish a company called
"Hermann Thorens SA" with an online presence to sell
lighters. See more on my lighter page here.